At a Moose Lodge in Kenosha, Wis., Ann Mingilino works a voter registration table.
Photographer: Lucy Hewett for Bloomberg BusinessweekBloomberg Businessweek Fanned Across America to Photograph the Election
Braving a pandemic, more Americans voted this year than ever before—and the magazine documented a few of them participating in democracy.
It’s fitting—scary, but fitting—that the chaotic year of 2020 would lurch toward its end with a contested presidential election. At the center of the chaos was President Trump, who declared victory at 2:30 a.m. on election night with ballots in battleground states still being counted, demanded a stop to “all voting,” even though voting was already over, and then tweeted, “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it.”
Even if Trump hadn’t alleged fraud, a long vote count in the swing states would have been stressful. Bush-Gore in 2000, which came down to hanging chads in Florida, was a doozy. But that time both candidates honored the process. This time, the combination of the president’s conspiracy theories and a protracted count was like a hurricane that wouldn’t budge, causing more damage to democratic institutions as the hours went by.